Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon has won over 40 awards, and was nominated for 10 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and won Best Foreign Language Film (Taiwan), Best Art Direction, Best Original Score and Best Cinematography,[5] receiving the most nominations ever for a non-English language film at the time (Roma has since tied this record). The film also won four BAFTAs and two Golden Globe Awards, one for Best Foreign Film. Along with its awards success, Crouching Tiger continues to be hailed as one of the greatest and most influential martial arts films.[6][7] The film has been praised for its story, direction, and cinematography, and for its martial arts sequences.

The film is set in 18th century Qing Dynasty China. Li Mu Bai (Chow Yun-fat) is an accomplished Wudang swordsman and Yu Shu Lien (Michelle Yeoh) heads a private security company. Yu Shu Lien and Li Mu Bai have feelings for each other, but because Shu Lien had been engaged to Mu Bai's closest friend, Meng Sizhao,[8] before his death, Shu Lien and Mu Bai feel bound by loyalty to Meng Sizhao and have not acted on their feelings for one another. Mu Bai, after choosing to retire, asks Shu Lien to give his sword "Green Destiny" to their benefactor Sir Te (Sihung Lung) in Beijing. Long ago, Mu Bai's master was murdered by Jade Fox (Cheng Pei-pei), a woman who sought to learn Wudang skills. While at Sir Te's place, Shu Lien makes the acquaintance of Jen Yu (Zhang Ziyi), who is the daughter of rich and powerful Governor Yu and is about to get married.

One evening, a masked thief sneaks into Sir Te's estate and steals the Green Destiny. Master Bo and Shu Lien trace the theft to Governor Yu's compound, where Jade Fox had been posing as Jen's governess for many years. Soon after, Mu Bai arrives in Peking and discusses the theft with Shu Lien. Master Bo makes the acquaintance of Inspector Tsai (Wang Deming), a police investigator from the provinces, and his daughter May (Li Li), who have come to Peking in pursuit of Fox. Fox challenges the pair and Sir Te's servant Master Bo (Gao Xi'an) to a showdown that night. Following a protracted battle, the group is on the verge of defeat when Mu Bai arrives and outmaneuvers Fox. Before Mu Bai can kill Fox, the masked thief reappears and helps Fox. Fox kills Tsai before fleeing with the thief (who is revealed to be Jen). After seeing Jen fight Mu Bai, Fox realizes Jen had been secretly studying the Wudang manual and may have surpassed her in combat skills.

At night, a desert bandit named Lo (Chang Chen) breaks into Jen's bedroom and asks her to leave with him. A flashback reveals that in the past, when Governor Yu and his family were traveling in the western deserts, Lo and his bandits had raided Jen's caravan and Lo had stolen her comb. She pursued him to his desert cave to get her comb back. However, the pair soon fell passionately in love. Lo eventually convinced Jen to return to her family, though not before telling her a legend of a man who jumped off a cliff to make his wishes come true. Because the man's heart was pure, he did not die. Lo came to Beijing to persuade Jen not to go through with her arranged marriage. However, Jen refuses to leave with him. Later, Lo interrupts Jen's wedding procession, begging her to leave with him. Nearby, Shu Lien and Mu Bai convince Lo to wait for Jen at Mount Wudang, where he will be safe from Jen's family, who are furious with him. Jen runs away from her husband on their wedding night before the marriage could be consummated. Disguised in male clothing, she is accosted at an inn by a large group of warriors; armed with the Green Destiny and her own superior combat skills, she emerges victorious.

Jen visits Shu Lien, who tells her that Lo is waiting for her at Mount Wudang. After an angry exchange, the two women engage in a duel. Shu Lien is the superior fighter, but Jen wields the Green Destiny: the sword destroys each weapon that Shu Lien wields, until Shu Lien finally manages to defeat Jen with a broken sword. When Shu Lien shows mercy, Jen cuts Shu Lien's arm. Mu Bai arrives and pursues Jen into a bamboo forest. Mu Bai confronts Jen and offers to take her as his student. She arrogantly promises to accept him as her teacher if he can take Green Destiny from her in three moves. Mu Bai is able to take the sword in only one move, but Jen goes back on her word to accept him as teacher. Mu Bai throws the sword over a waterfall, Jen dives after it, and is then rescued by Fox. Fox puts Jen into a drugged sleep and places her in a cavern; Mu Bai and Shu Lien discover her there. Fox suddenly reappears and attacks the others with poisoned darts. Mu Bai blocks the needles with his sword and avenges his master's death by mortally wounding Fox, only to realize that one of the darts hit him in the neck. Fox dies, confessing that her goal had been to kill Jen because Jen had hidden the secrets of Wudang's best fighting techniques from her.

As Jen leaves to prepare an antidote for the poisoned dart, Mu Bai prepares to die. With his last breaths, he finally confesses his love for Shu Lien. He dies in her arms as Jen returns, too late to save him. The Green Destiny is returned to Sir Te. Jen later goes to Mount Wudang and spends one last night with Lo. The next morning, Lo finds Jen standing on a bridge overlooking the edge of the mountain. In an echo of the legend that they spoke about in the desert, she asks him to make a wish. He wishes for them to be together again, back in the desert. The movie ends with Jen jumping off the bridge and Lo looks at her with despair.

The name "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon" is a literal translation of the Chinese idiom "臥虎藏龍" which describes a place or situation that is full of unnoticed masters. It is from a poem of the ancient Chinese poet Yu Xin's (513–581) that reads "暗石疑藏虎，盤根似臥龍", which means "behind the rock in the dark probably hides a tiger, and the coiling giant root resembles a crouching dragon."[9] The last character in Xiaohu and Jiaolong's names mean "Tiger" and "Dragon", respectively.

Some prominent martial arts styles traditionally were held to have been originated by women, e.g. History of Wing Chun credits a Buddhist nun Ng Mui teaching Yim Wing-Chun the style. The film's title reference to masters one does not notice necessarily includes mostly women, and suggests the advantage of a female bodyguard. Traditional weapons taught in Wing Chun are exactly those easily concealed (butterfly knives) or similar to those taught in Japanese Aikido primarily to women (long pole).[10] The style emphasizes centerline blows to vital areas, as opposed to maiming strikes against limbs, thus seems intended for death blows, knockouts, and tactics generally used by physically weaker opponents seeking to win in a single strike rather than engage in an extended confrontation. Again, the title suggests powerful creatures that strike by surprise.

A teacher's desire to have a worthy student, the obligations between a student and a master, and tensions in these relationships are central to the characters' motives, conflicts between the characters, and the unfolding of the film's plot. Li Mu Bai is burdened with the responsibility for avenging his master's death, and turns his back on retirement to live up to this obligation. His fascination with the prospect of having Jen as a disciple also motivates his behavior, and that of Jade Fox.

Regarding conflicts in the student-teacher relationship, the potential for exploitation created by the subordinate position of the student and the tensions that exist when a student surpasses or resists a teacher are explored. Jen hides her mastery of martial arts from her teacher, Jade Fox, which leads both to their parting of ways and to Jade Fox's attempt on Jen's life. At the same time, Jade Fox's own unorthodox relationship with a Wudang master (whom she claims would not teach her, but did take sexual advantage of her) brought her to a life of crime.

Poison is also a significant theme in the film. In the world of martial arts, poison is considered the act of one who is too cowardly and dishonorable to fight; and indeed, the only character who explicitly fits these characteristics is Jade Fox. The poison is a weapon of her bitterness,[11] and quest for vengeance: she poisons the master of Wudang, attempts to poison Jen, and succeeds in killing Mu Bai using a poisoned needle.

However, the poison is not only of the physical sort: Jade Fox's tutelage of Jen has left Jen spiritually poisoned, which can be seen in the lying, stealing, and betrayal Jen commits. However, Jen is never seen to use poison herself, even though she was trained by Jade Fox. This indicates that she may yet be reformed and integrated into society. In further play on this theme by the director, Jade Fox, as she dies, refers to the poison from a young child, "the deceit of an eight-year-old girl," obviously referring to what she considers her own spiritual poisoning by her young apprentice Jen. Li Mu Bai himself warns that without guidance, Jen could become a "poison dragon".

The film was originally written as a novel series by Wang Dulu starting in the late 1930s. The film is loosely adapted from the storyline of the fourth book in the series, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

The film was made in Beijing, with location shooting in the Anhui, Hebei, Jiangsu, and Xinjiang provinces of China.[14] The first phase of shooting was in the Gobi Desert where it consistently rained. Director Ang Lee noted, "I didn't take one break in eight months, not even for half a day. I was miserable -- I just didn't have the extra energy to be happy. Near the end, I could hardly breathe. I thought I was about to have a stroke."[15] The stunt work was mostly performed by the actors themselves and Ang Lee stated in an interview that computers were used "only to remove the safety wires that held the actors." "Most of the time you can see their faces," he added, "That's really them in the trees."[16]

Another compounding issue was the difference between accents of the four lead actors: Chow Yun-fat is from Hong Kong and speaks Cantonese natively, and Michelle Yeoh is from Malaysia and grew up speaking English and Malay;[17] she learned the Mandarin lines phonetically.[18] Only Zhang Ziyi spoke with a native Mandarin accent that Ang Lee wanted.[15] Chow Yun Fat said, on "the first day [of shooting], I had to do 28 takes just because of the language. That's never happened before in my life."[15]

Because the film specifically targeted Western audiences rather than the domestic audiences who were already used to Wuxia films, English subtitles were needed. Ang Lee, who was educated in the West, personally edited the subtitles to ensure they were satisfactory for Western audiences.

The score was composed by Tan Dun, originally performed by Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, Shanghai National Orchestra, and Shanghai Percussion Ensemble. It also features many solo passages for cello played by Yo-Yo Ma. The "last track" ("A Love Before Time") features Coco Lee, who later performed it at the Academy Awards. The music for the entire film was produced in two weeks.[19]

The film was adapted into a video game, a comics series, and a 34-episode Taiwanese television series based on the original novel. The latter was released in 2004 as New Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon for US and Canadian release.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, which is based on an early 20th century novel by Wang Dulu, unfolds much like a comic book, with the characters and their circumstances being painted using wide brush strokes. Subtlety is not part of Lee's palette; he is going for something grand and melodramatic, and that's what he gets.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was very well received in the Western world, receiving numerous awards. The review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reported that 97% of critics gave the film positive reviews, based on 153 reviews with an average rating of 8.6/10. The website's critical consensus states: "The movie that catapulted Ang Lee into the ranks of upper echelon Hollywood filmmakers, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon features a deft mix of amazing martial arts battles, beautiful scenery, and tasteful drama."[21]Metacritic reported the film had an average score of 93 out of 100, based on 31 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".[22]

Some Chinese-speaking viewers were bothered by the accents of the leading actors. Neither Chow (a native Cantonese speaker) nor Yeoh (who was born and raised in Malaysia) speaks Mandarin as a mother tongue. All four main actors spoke with different accents: Chow speaks with a Cantonese accent;[23] Yeoh with a Malaysian accent; Chang Chen a Taiwanese accent; and Zhang Ziyi a Beijing accent. Yeoh responded to this complaint in a December 28, 2000, interview with Cinescape. She argued, "My character lived outside of Beijing, and so I didn't have to do the Beijing accent." When the interviewer, Craig Reid, remarked, "My mother-in-law has this strange Sichuan-Mandarin accent that's hard for me to understand.", Yeoh responded: "Yes, provinces all have their very own strong accents. When we first started the movie, Cheng Pei Pei was going to have her accent, and Chang Zhen was going to have his accent, and this person would have that accent. And in the end nobody could understand what they were saying. Forget about us, even the crew from Beijing thought this was all weird."[24]

The film led to a boost in popularity of Chinese wuxia films in the western world, where they were previously little known, and led to films such as House of Flying Daggers and Hero marketed towards Western audiences. The film also provided the breakthrough role for Zhang Ziyi's career, who noted:

Because of movies like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Hero, and Memoirs of a Geisha, a lot of people in the United States have become interested not only in me but in Chinese and Asian actors in general. Because of these movies, maybe there will be more opportunities for Asian actors.

In 2016, it was voted the 35th-best film of the 21st century as picked by 177 film critics from around the world.[29]

Film Journal noted that Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon "pulled off the rare trifecta of critical acclaim, boffo box-office and gestalt shift",[30] in reference to its ground-breaking success for a subtitled film in the American market.

Wu and Chan (2007)[31] look at Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon as somewhat of an example of "counter-flow", a film that has challenged Hollywood's grip on the film market. They argue that as a product of globalization, the movie did not demonstrate a one-way flow based on Western ideology, but was multidirectional with the ability of local resources to influence the West and gain capital.[31] Despite its international success and perceived ability to change the flow from East to West, however, there were still instances of Western adaptation for the movie, such as putting more emphasis on female characters to better execute a balance between gender roles in the East and West.[31] The script of the film was written between Taiwan and Hollywood and in translating the film to English, many cultural references were lost, which made maintaining the cultural authenticity of the film while still reaching out to the West very difficult.[31] The thematic conflict throughout the movie between societal roles and personal desires attribute to the international reception of the film, which resonates with both the Eastern and Western audiences.[31] Additionally, international and Western networks were used in the production and promotion of the film, which were needed to achieve its global distribution.[31] Additional marketing strategies were needed for the film to attract the Western audience, who were unfamiliar with the cultural products of the East.[31]

The film premiered in cinemas on December 8, 2000, in limited release within the US. During its opening weekend, the film opened in 15th place, grossing $663,205 in business, showing at 16 locations.[3] On January 12, 2001, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon premiered in cinemas in wide release throughout the US grossing $8,647,295 in business, ranking in sixth place. The film Save the Last Dance came in first place during that weekend, grossing $23,444,930.[32] The film's revenue dropped by almost 30% in its second week of release, earning $6,080,357. For that particular weekend, the film fell to eighth place screening in 837 theaters. Save the Last Dance remained unchanged in first place, grossing $15,366,047 in box-office revenue.[3] During its final week in release, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon opened in a distant 50th place with $37,233 in revenue.[33] The film went on to top out domestically at $128,078,872 in total ticket sales through a 31-week theatrical run. Internationally, the film took in an additional $85,446,864 in box-office business for a combined worldwide total of $213,525,736.[3] For 2000 as a whole, the film cumulatively ranked at a worldwide box-office performance position of 19.[34]

Gathering widespread critical acclaim at the Toronto and New York film festivals, the film also became a favorite when Academy Awards nominations were announced in 2001. The film was, however, screened out of competition at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival.[35] The film received ten Academy Award nominations, which was the highest ever for a non-English language film, up until it was tied by Roma (2018).[36]

A sequel to the film, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny, was released in 2016. It was directed by Yuen Woo-ping, who was the action choreographer for the first film. It is a co-production between Pegasus Media, China Film Group Corporation, and the Weinstein Company.[52] Unlike the original film, the sequel was filmed in English for international release and dubbed to Mandarin for Chinese releases.

Sword of Destiny is based on the book Iron Knight, Silver Vase, the next (and last) novel in the Crane-Iron Pentalogy. It features a mostly new cast, headed by Donnie Yen. Michelle Yeoh reprised her role from the original.[53] Zhang Ziyi was also approached to appear in Sword of Destiny but refused, stating that she would only appear in a sequel if Ang Lee were directing it.[54]

In the United States, the sequel was for the most part not shown in theaters, instead being distributed via the video streaming service Netflix.[55]

The theme of Janet Jackson's song "China Love" was related to the film by MTV News, in which Jackson sings of the daughter of an emperor in love with a warrior, unable to sustain relations when forced to marry into royalty.[56]

1.
Chinese people
–
The Han Chinese, Han people or simply Han are an ethnic group native to East Asia. They constitute approximately 92% of the population of China, 95% of Taiwan, 76% of Singapore, 23% of Malaysia, Han Chinese are the worlds largest ethnic group with over 1.3 billion people. Similarly, the Chinese language also came to be named the Han language ever since, in the Oxford Dictionary, the Han are defined as The dominant ethnic group in China. In the Encyclopedia of the Peoples of Asia and Oceania, the Han are called the dominant population in China, as well as in Taiwan, according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, the Han are the Chinese peoples especially as distinguished from non-Chinese elements in the population. The name Hanzhong, in turn, was derived from the Han River, which flows through the regions plains. The river, in turn, derives its name from such as Tianhan, Yinhan, Xinghan or Yunhan, all ancient Chinese poetic nicknames for the Milky Way. This gave rise to a commonly used nowadays by overseas Chinese for ethnic identity – Huaren. The term is used in conversation and is also an element in the Cantonese word for Chinatown. The vast majority of Han Chinese – over 1.2 billion of them – live in areas under the jurisdiction of the Peoples Republic of China, where they constitute about 92% of its population. Han Chinese also constitute the majority in both of the administrative regions of the PRC—about 95% and 96% of the population of Hong Kong and Macau. There are over 22 million Han Chinese in Taiwan, they began migrating from the coastal provinces of mainland China to Taiwan during the 13th to 17th century. At first, these migrants chose to settle in locations that bore a resemblance to the areas they had left behind in mainland China, hoklo immigrants from Quanzhou settled in coastal regions, and those from Zhangzhou tended to gather on inland plains, while the Hakka inhabited hilly areas. Clashes between these groups over land, water, and cultural differences led to the relocation of some communities, of about 40 million overseas Chinese worldwide, nearly 30 million live in Southeast Asia. They are collectively called Nanyang Chinese, according to a population genetic study, Singapore is the country with the biggest proportion of Hans in Southeast Asia. Up until the past few decades, overseas Han communities originated predominantly from areas in southern China, christmas Island has a Chinese majority at 70%, large Chinese populations also live in Malaysia and Thailand. Prior to the 1965 split, Malaysia and Singapore used to have the largest overseas Chinese population in the world and this position has since been taken by Thailand. The prehistory of the Han ethnic group is closely intertwined with both records and mythology. Han Chinese trace their ancestry from a confederation of late neolithic/early bronze-age agricultural tribes that lived along the Guanzhong, the Yellow Emperor is traditionally credited to have united with the neighbouring Shennong tribes after defeating their leader, Flame Emperor, at the Battle of Banquan

2.
Subtitle (captioning)
–
The encoded method can either be pre-rendered with the video or separate as either a graphic or text to be rendered and overlaid by the receiver. Teletext subtitle language follows the audio, except in multi-lingual countries where the broadcaster may provide subtitles in additional languages on other teletext pages. EIA-608 captions are similar, except that North American Spanish stations may provide captioning in Spanish on CC3, DVD and Blu-ray only differ in using run-length encoded graphics instead of text, as well as some HD DVB broadcasts. Sometimes, mainly at festivals, subtitles may be shown on a separate display below the screen. Television subtitling for the deaf and hard of hearing is referred to as closed captioning in some countries. The word subtitle is the prefix followed by title. In some cases, such as opera, the dialog is displayed above the stage in what are referred to as surtitles. Today, professional subtitlers usually work with specialized software and hardware where the video is digitally stored on a hard disk. Besides creating the subtitles, the subtitler usually also tells the computer software the exact positions where each subtitle should appear and disappear, for cinema film, this task is traditionally done by separate technicians. The end result is a file containing the actual subtitles as well as position markers indicating where each subtitle should appear and disappear. These markers are based on timecode if it is a work for electronic media. For multimedia-style Webcasting, check, SMIL Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language, same-language captions, i. e. without translation, were primarily intended as an aid for people who are deaf or hard of hearing. Internationally, there are several studies which demonstrate that same-language captioning can have a major impact on literacy. This method of subtitling is used by television broadcasters in China. Same Language Subtitling is the use of Synchronized Captioning of Musical Lyrics as a Repeated Reading activity, the basic reading activity involves students viewing a short subtitled presentation projected onscreen, while completing a response worksheet. Closed captioning is the American term for closed subtitles specifically intended for people who are deaf and these are a transcription rather than a translation, and usually contain descriptions of important non-dialog audio as well such as or and lyrics. From the expression closed captions the word caption has in recent years come to mean a subtitle intended for the hard of hearing, be it open or closed. In British English subtitles usually refers to subtitles for the hard of hearing, however, programs such as news bulletins, current affairs programs, sport, some talk shows and political and special events utilize real time or online captioning

3.
Cinematography
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Typically, a lens is used to repeatedly focus the light reflected from objects into real images on the light-sensitive surface inside a camera during a questioned exposure, creating multiple images. With an electronic sensor, this produces an electrical charge at each pixel. The result with photographic emulsion is a series of invisible latent images on the film stock, the images on the film stock are played back at a rapid speed and projected onto a screen, creating the illusion of motion. Cinematography finds uses in fields of science and business as well as for entertainment purposes. The word cinematography was created from the Greek words κίνημα, meaning movement, motion and γράφειν meaning to record, the word used to refer to the art, process, or job of filming movies, but later its meaning was restricted to motion picture photography. In the 1830s, moving images were produced on revolving drums and disks, with independent invention by Simon von Stampfer in Austria, Joseph Plateau in Belgium, and William Horner in Britain. In 1845, Francis Ronalds invented the first successful camera able to make recordings of the varying indications of meteorological. The cameras were supplied to numerous observatories around the world and some remained in use well into the 20th century. William Lincoln patented a device, in 1867, that showed animated pictures called the wheel of life or zoopraxiscope, in it, moving drawings or photographs were watched through a slit. On 19 June 1873, Eadweard Muybridge successfully photographed a horse named Sallie Gardner in fast motion using a series of 24 stereoscopic cameras. The cameras were arranged along a parallel to the horses. They were 21 inches apart to cover the 20 feet taken by the horse stride, although it was never played back at speed to create motion, this was the first step towards motion pictures. The late nineteenth to the twentieth century brought rise to the use of film not only for entertainment purposes. The experimental film Roundhay Garden Scene, filmed by Louis Le Prince on 14 October 1888, in Roundhay, Leeds and this movie was shot on paper film. W. K. L. Dickson, working under the direction of Thomas Alva Edison, was the first to design a successful apparatus and this camera took a series of instantaneous photographs on standard Eastman Kodak photographic emulsion coated onto a transparent celluloid strip 35 mm wide. The results of work were first shown in public in 1893, using the viewing apparatus also designed by Dickson. Contained within a box, only one person at a time looking into it through a peephole could view the movie. The Lumière brothers were the first to present projected, moving, photographic, in 1896, movie theaters were open in France, Italy, Brussels, and London

4.
Martial arts
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Although the term martial art has become associated with the fighting arts of eastern Asia, it originally referred to the combat systems of Europe as early as the 1550s. The term is derived from Latin, and means arts of Mars, Martial arts may be categorized along a variety of criteria, including, Traditional or historical arts vs. contemporary styles of folk wrestling and modern hybrid martial arts. Such traditions include eskrima, silat, kalaripayat, kobudo, and historical European martial arts, Many Chinese martial arts also feature weapons as part of their curriculum. Similarly, modern Western martial arts and sports include fencing, stick-fighting systems like canne de combat or singlestick. Combat-oriented Health-oriented Many martial arts, especially those from Asia, also teach side disciplines which pertain to medicinal practices and this is particularly prevalent in traditional Asian martial arts which may teach bone-setting, herbalism, and other aspects of traditional medicine. Spirituality-oriented Martial arts can also be linked with religion and spirituality, numerous systems are reputed to have been founded, disseminated, or practiced by monks or nuns. Throughout Asia, meditation may be incorporated as part of training, in those countries influenced by Hindu-Buddhist philosophy, the art itself may be used as an aid to attaining enlightenment. Japanese styles, when concerning non-physical qualities of the combat, are strongly influenced by Mahayana Buddhist philosophy. Concepts like empty mind and beginners mind are recurrent, aikido, for instance, can have a strong philosophical belief of the flow of energy and peace fostering, as idealised by its founder Morihei Ueshiba. Traditional Korean martial arts place emphasis on the development of the spiritual and philosophical development. A common theme in most Korean styles, such as taekkyeon and taekwondo, is the value of peace in a practitioner. The Koreans believe that the use of force is only justified through defense. Many such martial arts incorporate music, especially strong percussive rhythms, the oldest works of art depicting scenes of battle are cave paintings from Spain dated between 10,000 and 6,000 BCE that show organized groups fighting with bows and arrows. Chinese martial arts originated during the Xia Dynasty more than 4000 years ago and it is said the Yellow Emperor Huangdi introduced the earliest fighting systems to China. The Yellow Emperor is described as a general who, before becoming Chinas leader, wrote lengthy treatises on medicine, astrology. One of his opponents was Chi You who was credited as the creator of jiao di. The foundation of modern Asian martial arts is likely a blend of early Chinese, during the Warring States period of Chinese history extensive development in martial philosophy and strategy emerged, as described by Sun Tzu in The Art of War. Legendary accounts link the origin of Shaolinquan to the spread of Buddhism from India during the early 5th century AD, with the figure of Bodhidharma, to China

5.
Qing dynasty
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It was preceded by the Ming dynasty and succeeded by the Republic of China. The Qing multi-cultural empire lasted almost three centuries and formed the base for the modern Chinese state. The dynasty was founded by the Jurchen Aisin Gioro clan in Manchuria, in the late sixteenth century, Nurhaci, originally a Ming vassal, began organizing Banners, military-social units that included Jurchen, Han Chinese, and Mongol elements. Nurhaci formed the Jurchen clans into an entity, which he renamed as the Manchus. By 1636, his son Hong Taiji began driving Ming forces out of Liaodong and declared a new dynasty, in 1644, peasant rebels led by Li Zicheng conquered the Ming capital, Beijing. The Ten Great Campaigns of the Qianlong Emperor from the 1750s to the 1790s extended Qing control into Central Asia, the early rulers maintained their Manchu ways, and while their title was Emperor, they used khan to the Mongols and they were patrons of Tibetan Buddhism. They governed using Confucian styles and institutions of government and retained the imperial examinations to recruit Han Chinese to work under or in parallel with Manchus. They also adapted the ideals of the system in dealing with neighboring territories. The Qianlong reign saw the apogee and initial decline in prosperity. The population rose to some 400 million, but taxes and government revenues were fixed at a low rate, corruption set in, rebels tested government legitimacy, and ruling elites did not change their mindsets in the face of changes in the world system. Following the Opium War, European powers imposed unequal treaties, free trade, the Taiping Rebellion and the Dungan Revolt in Central Asia led to the deaths of some 20 million people, most of them due to famines caused by war. In spite of disasters, in the Tongzhi Restoration of the 1860s, Han Chinese elites rallied to the defense of the Confucian order. The initial gains in the Self-Strengthening Movement were destroyed in the First Sino-Japanese War of 1895, in which the Qing lost its influence over Korea, New Armies were organized, but the ambitious Hundred Days Reform of 1898 was turned back by Empress Dowager Cixi, a conservative leader. Sun Yat-sen and other revolutionaries competed with reformist monarchists such as Kang Youwei, after the deaths of Cixi and the Guangxu Emperor in 1908, the hardline Manchu court alienated reformers and local elites alike. The Wuchang Uprising on October 11,1911, led to the Xinhai Revolution, General Yuan Shikai negotiated the abdication of Puyi, the last emperor, on February 12,1912. Nurhaci declared himself the Bright Khan of the Later Jin state in both of the 12–13th century Jurchen Jin dynasty and of his Aisin Gioro clan. His son Hong Taiji renamed the dynasty Great Qing in 1636, there are competing explanations on the meaning of Qīng. The character Qīng is composed of water and azure, both associated with the water element and this association would justify the Qing conquest as defeat of fire by water

6.
Pinyin
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Pinyin, or Hànyǔ Pīnyīn, is the official romanization system for Standard Chinese in mainland China, Malaysia, Singapore, and Taiwan. It is often used to teach Standard Chinese, which is written using Chinese characters. The system includes four diacritics denoting tones, Pinyin without tone marks is used to spell Chinese names and words in languages written with the Latin alphabet, and also in certain computer input methods to enter Chinese characters. The pinyin system was developed in the 1950s by many linguists, including Zhou Youguang and it was published by the Chinese government in 1958 and revised several times. The International Organization for Standardization adopted pinyin as a standard in 1982. The system was adopted as the standard in Taiwan in 2009. The word Hànyǔ means the language of the Han people. In 1605, the Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci published Xizi Qiji in Beijing and this was the first book to use the Roman alphabet to write the Chinese language. Twenty years later, another Jesuit in China, Nicolas Trigault, neither book had much immediate impact on the way in which Chinese thought about their writing system, and the romanizations they described were intended more for Westerners than for the Chinese. One of the earliest Chinese thinkers to relate Western alphabets to Chinese was late Ming to early Qing Dynasty scholar-official, the first late Qing reformer to propose that China adopt a system of spelling was Song Shu. A student of the great scholars Yu Yue and Zhang Taiyan, Song had been to Japan and observed the effect of the kana syllabaries. This galvanized him into activity on a number of fronts, one of the most important being reform of the script, while Song did not himself actually create a system for spelling Sinitic languages, his discussion proved fertile and led to a proliferation of schemes for phonetic scripts. The Wade–Giles system was produced by Thomas Wade in 1859, and it was popular and used in English-language publications outside China until 1979. This Sin Wenz or New Writing was much more sophisticated than earlier alphabets. In 1940, several members attended a Border Region Sin Wenz Society convention. Mao Zedong and Zhu De, head of the army, both contributed their calligraphy for the masthead of the Sin Wenz Societys new journal. Outside the CCP, other prominent supporters included Sun Yat-sens son, Sun Fo, Cai Yuanpei, the countrys most prestigious educator, Tao Xingzhi, an educational reformer. Over thirty journals soon appeared written in Sin Wenz, plus large numbers of translations, biographies, some contemporary Chinese literature, and a spectrum of textbooks

7.
Beijing
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Beijing is the capital of the Peoples Republic of China and the worlds third most populous city proper. It is also one of the worlds most populous capital cities, the city, located in northern China, is governed as a direct-controlled municipality under the national government with 16 urban, suburban, and rural districts. Beijing is the second largest Chinese city by population after Shanghai and is the nations political, cultural. It is home to the headquarters of most of Chinas largest state-owned companies, and is a hub for the national highway, expressway, railway. The citys history dates back three millennia, as the last of the Four Great Ancient Capitals of China, Beijing has been the political centre of the country for much of the past eight centuries. Beijing was the largest city in the world by population for much of the second millennium A. D, the city is renowned for its opulent palaces, temples, parks, gardens, tombs, walls and gates. Its art treasures and universities have made it centre of culture, encyclopædia Britannica notes that few cities in the world have served for so long as the political headquarters and cultural centre of an area as immense as China. Siheyuans, the traditional housing style, and hutongs, the narrow alleys between siheyuans, are major tourist attractions and are common in urban Beijing. The city hosted the 2008 Summer Olympics and was chosen to host the 2022 Winter Olympics, many of Beijings 91 universities consistently rank among the best in China, of which Peking University and Tsinghua University are ranked in the top 60 universities in the world. Beijings Zhongguancun area is known as Chinas Silicon Valley and Chinas center of innovation. According to the 2016 InterNations Expat Insider Survey, Beijing ranked first in Asia in the subcategory Personal Finance Index, expats live primarily in urban districts such as Dongcheng and Chaoyang in the east, or in suburban districts such as Shunyi. Over the past 3,000 years, the city of Beijing has had other names. The name Beijing, which means Northern Capital, was applied to the city in 1403 during the Ming Dynasty to distinguish the city from Nanjing, the English spelling is based on the pinyin romanisation of the two characters as they are pronounced in Standard Mandarin. Those dialects preserve the Middle Chinese pronunciation of 京 as kjaeng, the single Chinese character abbreviation for Beijing is 京, which appears on automobile license plates in the city. The official Latin alphabet abbreviation for Beijing is BJ, the earliest traces of human habitation in the Beijing municipality were found in the caves of Dragon Bone Hill near the village of Zhoukoudian in Fangshan District, where Peking Man lived. Homo erectus fossils from the date to 230,000 to 250,000 years ago. Paleolithic Homo sapiens also lived more recently, about 27,000 years ago. Archaeologists have found neolithic settlements throughout the municipality, including in Wangfujing, the first walled city in Beijing was Ji, a city from the 11th to 7th century BC

8.
Michelle Yeoh
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Tan Sri Dato Seri Michelle Yeoh Choo-Kheng is a Chinese Malaysian actress, best known for performing her own stunts in the Hong Kong action films that brought her to fame in the early 1990s. Born in Ipoh, Malaysia, she was chosen by People as one of the 50 Most Beautiful People in the World in 1997, in 2008, the film critic website Rotten Tomatoes ranked her the greatest action heroine of all time. In 2009, she was listed by People – as the only Asian actress – as one of the 35 All-Time Screen Beauties and she is credited as Michelle Khan in some of her earlier films. This alias was chosen by the D&B studio who thought it might be more marketable to international, Yeoh later preferred using her real name. Yeoh was born in Ipoh, Malaysia, to an ethnic Chinese family of mixed Cantonese and her parents are Janet Yeoh and Yeoh Kian Teik, a lawyer and MCA politician. She was keen on dance from an age, beginning ballet at the age of four. At the age of 15, she moved with her parents to the United Kingdom, Yeoh later studied at the Royal Academy of Dance in London, majoring in ballet. However, an injury prevented her from becoming a professional ballet dancer. She later received a B. A. degree in Creative Arts with a minor in Drama, in 1983, at the age of 20, Yeoh won the Miss Malaysia beauty pageant. She represented Malaysia at the Queen of the Pacific 1983 beauty pageant which was held in Australia and she was also Malaysias representative at the Miss World 1983 pageant in London. From there, she appeared in a commercial with Jackie Chan which caught the attention of a fledgling Hong Kong film production company. Yeoh started her career acting in action and martial arts films such as Yes, Madam in 1985. The D&B Group in Hong Kong was run by Dickson Poon, Yeoh married Poon in 1987 and retired from acting. After the couple divorced in 1992, Yeoh returned to acting, yeohs performance in Police Story 3, Super Cop marked her comeback. She acted in The Heroic Trio in 1993, and the Yuen Woo-ping films Tai Chi Master, Yeoh learned English and Malay before Cantonese. She learned the Mandarin lines for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon phonetically and she played Wai Lin in the James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies. Brosnan was impressed, describing her as an actress who was serious. He referred to her as a female James Bond in reference to her combat abilities and she wanted again to perform her own stunts but was prevented because director Roger Spottiswoode considered it too dangerous

9.
Zhang Ziyi
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Zhang Ziyi is a Chinese actress and model. She is considered one of the Four Dan Actresses of China and her first major role was in The Road Home. She later achieved fame for her role in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Zhang is known for being a Yimou Girl, as she frequently collaborated with director Zhang Yimou. Zhang is best known for her appearances in Rush Hour 2, Hero, House of Flying Daggers,2046, from 2004 to 2010, Zhang ranked in the Top 5 of Forbes China Celebrity 100 list every year. In 2008, she was awarded with the Outstanding Contribution to Chinese Cinema award at the 11th Shanghai International Film Festival, in 2013, she received the French Cultural Order at the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres Awards. Zhang was born and raised in Beijing, China and her parents are Zhang Yuanxiao, an accountant and later economist, and Li Zhousheng, a kindergarten teacher. She is very close to her brother, Zhang Zinan. Zhang began studying dance when she was 8 years old, subsequently, while at this boarding school, she noticed how mean the other girls were to each other while competing for status amongst the teachers. Zhang disliked the attitudes of her peers and teachers so much that, on one occasion, at the age of 15, Zhang won the national youth dance championship and began appearing in television commercials in Hong Kong. In 1996, Zhang entered the prestigious Central Academy of Drama in Beijing at the age of 17, Zhang plays a country girl who was in love with her teacher, and won the Best Actress Award at the 2000 Hundred Flowers Awards for her performance. She rose to fame in 2000 with her role as Jen in martial arts film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. The movies success in the US and Europe helped her break into Hollywood, Zhang then appeared in her first American film, Rush Hour 2. In 2002, Zhang co-starred in Hero alongside Tony Leung, directed by her early mentor Zhang Yimou, the film was a huge success in the English-speaking world and was nominated for an Oscar and a Golden Globe award in the category of Best Foreign Language Film. She then signed on to film a drama film Purple Butterfly. Zhang went back to the martial arts genre in House of Flying Daggers, again by Zhang Yimou and she plays the blind dancing girl Mei, who despite the lack of eyesight, is a skilled fighter. In preparation for the part, Zhang spent two months living with a blind girl. Her performance earned her a Best Actress nomination at the BAFTA Awards and she also featured on the House of Flying Daggers soundtrack with her own musical rendition of the ancient Chinese poem Jia Rén Qu. Zhang next starred in Wong Kar-wais romantic drama film 2046, which featured many top Chinese actors, Critics praise Zhang for her expressive body language that was combined with her reserved and complex emotions in performance as a struggling prostitute

10.
Columbia Pictures
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The studio was founded in 1918 as Cohn-Brandt-Cohn Film Sales by brothers Jack and Harry Cohn and Jacks best friend Joe Brandt, released its first feature film in August 1922. It adopted the Columbia Pictures name in 1924, and went public two years later and its name is derived from Columbia, a national personification of the United States, which is used as the studios logo. In its early years, it was a player in Hollywood. With Capra and others, Columbia became one of the homes of the screwball comedy. In the 1930s, Columbias major contract stars were Jean Arthur, in the 1940s, Rita Hayworth became the studios premier star and propelled their fortunes into the late 1950s. Rosalind Russell, Glenn Ford, and William Holden also became major stars at the studio, in 1982, the studio was purchased by The Coca-Cola Company, and launched TriStar Pictures as a joint venture with HBO and CBS. Five years later, Coca-Cola spun off Columbia, which was sold to Tri-Star, after a brief period of independence with Coca-Cola maintaining a financial interest, the combined studio was acquired by Sony in 1989. It is one of the film studios in the world. It was one of the so-called Little Three among the eight major film studios of Hollywoods Golden Age, Brandt was president of CBC Film Sales, handling sales, marketing and distribution from New York along with Jack Cohn, while Harry Cohn ran production in Hollywood. The studios early productions were short subjects, Screen Snapshots, the Hall Room Boys. The start-up CBC leased space in a Poverty Row studio on Hollywoods famously low-rent Gower Street, among Hollywoods elite, the studios small-time reputation led some to joke that CBC stood for Corned Beef and Cabbage. Brandt eventually tired of dealing with the Cohn brothers, and sold his stake to Harry Cohn. In an effort to improve its image, the Cohn brothers renamed the company Columbia Pictures Corporation on January 10,1924, Cohn remained head of production as well, thus concentrating enormous power in his hands. He would run Columbia for the next 34 years, the second-longest tenure of any studio chief, even in an industry rife with nepotism, Columbia was particularly notorious for having a number of Harry and Jacks relatives in high positions. Humorist Robert Benchley called it the Pine Tree Studio, because it has so many Cohns, Columbias product line consisted mostly of moderately budgeted features and short subjects including comedies, sports films, various serials, and cartoons. Columbia gradually moved into the production of higher-budget fare, eventually joining the tier of Hollywood studios along with United Artists. Like United Artists and Universal, Columbia was an integrated company. It controlled production and distribution, it did not own any theaters, helping Columbias climb was the arrival of an ambitious director, Frank Capra

11.
Simplified Chinese characters
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Simplified Chinese characters are standardized Chinese characters prescribed in the Table of General Standard Chinese Characters for use in mainland China. Along with traditional Chinese characters, it is one of the two character sets of the contemporary Chinese written language. The government of the Peoples Republic of China in mainland China has promoted them for use in printing since the 1950s and 1960s in an attempt to increase literacy and they are officially used in the Peoples Republic of China and Singapore. Traditional Chinese characters are used in Hong Kong, Macau. Overseas Chinese communities generally tend to use traditional characters, Simplified Chinese characters may be referred to by their official name above or colloquially. Strictly, the latter refers to simplifications of character structure or body, character forms that have existed for thousands of years alongside regular, Simplified character forms were created by decreasing the number of strokes and simplifying the forms of a sizable proportion of traditional Chinese characters. Some simplifications were based on popular cursive forms embodying graphic or phonetic simplifications of the traditional forms, some characters were simplified by applying regular rules, for example, by replacing all occurrences of a certain component with a simplified version of the component. Variant characters with the pronunciation and identical meaning were reduced to a single standardized character. Finally, many characters were left untouched by simplification, and are identical between the traditional and simplified Chinese orthographies. Some simplified characters are very dissimilar to and unpredictably different from traditional characters and this often leads opponents not well-versed in the method of simplification to conclude that the overall process of character simplification is also arbitrary. In reality, the methods and rules of simplification are few, on the other hand, proponents of simplification often flaunt a few choice simplified characters as ingenious inventions, when in fact these have existed for hundreds of years as ancient variants. However, the Chinese government never officially dropped its goal of further simplification in the future, in August 2009, the PRC began collecting public comments for a modified list of simplified characters. The new Table of General Standard Chinese Characters consisting of 8,105 characters was promulgated by the State Council of the Peoples Republic of China on June 5,2013, cursive written text almost always includes character simplification. Simplified forms used in print have always existed, they date back to as early as the Qin dynasty, One of the earliest proponents of character simplification was Lubi Kui, who proposed in 1909 that simplified characters should be used in education. In the years following the May Fourth Movement in 1919, many anti-imperialist Chinese intellectuals sought ways to modernise China, Traditional culture and values such as Confucianism were challenged. Soon, people in the Movement started to cite the traditional Chinese writing system as an obstacle in modernising China and it was suggested that the Chinese writing system should be either simplified or completely abolished. Fu Sinian, a leader of the May Fourth Movement, called Chinese characters the writing of ox-demons, lu Xun, a renowned Chinese author in the 20th century, stated that, If Chinese characters are not destroyed, then China will die. Recent commentators have claimed that Chinese characters were blamed for the problems in China during that time